The Resilient Entrepreneur, Edition #116
Hi there
I hope you had a great week!
Here are the topics in today's edition:
- The Best Entrepreneurs Know When to Slow Down
- Move Fast and Break Things, Or Think First and Win?
Please reach out with comments, questions, or suggestions for articles!
Talk soon,
Tom
TACTICS FOR RESILIENT ENTREPRENEURS
The Best Entrepreneurs Know When to Slow Down
Speed is an entrepreneur’s superpower — until it isn’t. Here are 5 situations where slowing down delivers better results.
I’m a doer. I love to finish as many of my Asana tasks as quickly as possible and move on.
There is nothing wrong with getting stuff done quickly. As an entrepreneur, I live in a world where there is always more to do than I have resources for. Instead of complaining about how much work stacks up on my desk or how full my calendar is, I’d rather invest my time and my mental energy in getting as much done as I can.
But sometimes, it pays to work a little slower than at maximum speed. Let’s look at some examples.
1. Emotions
Everybody knows you shouldn’t reply fast to emails that agitate you. But even if you don’t reply instinctively to these emails, it’s tempting to air your agitation with your colleagues right after receiving an emotional message. Don’t do it. Keep the emotions for you for a moment and let them cool down. In most cases, it’s not worth wasting emotional energy on business-related matters. Most problems can be settled one way or the other, but not within a split second.
From my experience, such emotional problems are best handled by thinking about your options in quiet — on the bicycle, on a walk, during a long car drive listening to your favorite music, or during an undisturbed break with no other thoughts on your mind. And suddenly, but usually not immediately, everything falls into place, and you return to a constructive path. That’s the time you can call your colleagues to share your thoughts and discuss your options to move forward.
When a meeting agenda triggers my emotions, I usually go in without much preparation. It’s always good to listen first before conjuring worst-case scenarios and going into those meetings firmly primed that the world will end. Maybe you dramatized the issue based on the meeting invitation alone.
2. Hypes and bubbles
The tech industry thrives on hypes. In the 1990s, it was the internet. In the 2000s, it was the cloud. The 2010s brought the blockchain hype. And in the 2020s, all the buzz is about AI.
Catching the next big thing early is a precondition to realizing returns in the tech industry. But is it always right to be an early adopter?
Let’s look back at the dotcom bubble. Of course, this bubble laid the foundation for the modern internet and all its benefits. Of course, some companies like Google collected stellar returns by betting on the right thing early. But never forget that many companies heavily overpromised and overinvested during that time. Those companies now line the tech cemetery.
It was the same thing with the blockchain hype. Everyone asked whether your product supports the blockchain, and many tech entrepreneurs incorporated blockchain technology into their products without second thoughts. But is the blockchain really the right tool for every use case? Certainly not.
Can you make a good decision about whether to join a tech hype quickly? I doubt it. As always in life, there are pros and cons to everything. In my experience, it pays off to weigh those pros and cons carefully, and you will need time and mental space to contemplate your options.
3. Decisions are irreversible
Some decisions are truly irreversible, or reversible only with very harsh consequences. Do I have the right team of co-founders to found a company? Should I marry that woman and have kids with her? Should I sell my company?
Even if you have little time to make such decisions, take the time to think them through thoroughly. In contrast to conjuring up worst-case scenarios from apparently emotional emails and meetings, in this case, it is a good idea to think about the worst possible outcome for every irreversible decision.
4. You genuinely don’t know the answer
There are questions in an entrepreneur’s or a leader’s life where you genuinely don’t know the answer. And in contrast to common thinking, it’s perfectly OK not to know the answer to every question.
When I don’t know the answer to a question, I usually do two things:
First, I am transparent with my team about not knowing the answer. Because maybe somebody on my team knows the answer and can help me unblock my thinking.
Second, I think about the unanswerable question on the bicycle, on a walk, during a long car drive listening to your favorite music, or during an undisturbed break with no other thoughts on your mind. And suddenly, but usually not immediately, everything falls into place, and you return to a constructive path.
5. Next steps depend on other people’s reactions
Let’s return from the big, irreversible, and unanswerable questions to daily life. You’re in a flow of ticking off tasks one after the other. You feel super productive while you glance at your emptying task list.
But wait. Even tasks that don’t require reflection or cooling down can be completed too fast. Ticking off tasks quickly is great if you can do the entire task by yourself. But whenever you need somebody else’s input for optimal results, don’t tick the task off too quickly, but have the patience to wait for your counterpart’s input.
My favorite example here is people firing off 10 emails on a Friday afternoon. They are sending a message that they are done with their work, and it’s now your turn to pick it up. That’s not very considerate before a weekend. But much worse, they are also fooling themselves. They might have completed a task fast, but almost certainly the result will be suboptimal.
Conclusion
Speed is cherished in entrepreneurship and leadership, and in many cases, it’s right to speed things up. But as always, life as an entrepreneur or leader is a tightrope.
Entrepreneurship and leadership are difficult, and one reason why they are difficult is that it’s not always apparent when to speed up and when to slow down. Why don’t you start by going through your task list and marking those tasks where taking out a little speed would improve things?
STRATEGIES FOR RESILIENT ENTREPRENEURS
Move Fast and Break Things, Or Think First and Win?
Rushing to build what one customer asks for is a trap. Here’s how taking your time leads to better products and stronger demand.
Entrepreneurs and leaders love doing things quickly: Move fast and break things! Hurry up, the winner takes it all!
In daily life, it often pays off to know when to slow down. For more strategic activities such as product design or demand satisfaction, it’s the same thing. Speed is important, but speed can also hurt you.
While the pros of moving fast are widely discussed and glorified, the pros of taking your time aren’t. So let’s look into them in more detail.
Product Design
In my role as Founder & CEO of Yonder, a B2B SaaS company, I regularly talk to customers about their feedback on our product. Most customers request improvements to existing features, whereas most of them have very clear ideas of what those improvements should look like.
Should I run straight to our development team with each feature improvement requested by our customers? I don’t suggest doing so, for two reasons:
First, a rule of thumb states that your product roadmap should not contain more than 30% of direct customer requests, or you won’t have enough time to work on innovation and the next big thing. If you put too many of your customer requests forward for implementation, you might end up with the most polished piece of furniture on a sinking ship — an extra button here, a little automation there, but missing the next innovation cycle.
Second, always remember that you have more than one customer. If you improve a feature based on one customer’s feedback, you risk other customers not liking your “improvement”. Therefore, you need to discuss each feature improvement with multiple customers and then consolidate the feedback into an acceptable plan for the majority of your customers. If you’ve done that before, you will know that customers will ask you, “What took you so long?” when you release a feature improvement. Take it as a compliment and not a complaint — it means you did your homework before you started implementation.
Let’s look at product innovation now. Of course, artificial intelligence is the big thing everybody talks about right now. But do you think it’s easy to integrate AI into your product so that it adds value for your customers, and you can make money with it at the same time? I dare to say that many products have integrated AI without considering the costs of AI token consumption. Therefore, maybe it’s better to be late to the party, but first work out how to make money from this new technology.
Demand Satisfaction
Entrepreneurs love talking to people about their problems and what product would satisfy their demand. At the end, that’s the essence of entrepreneurship: Solve a customer problem and make money with it.
But take a moment to reflect before you jump on the bandwagon: Is there just a single person having that problem, or is there a market of many people with the same problem?
Before you start building a product, take the time to do some proper market research. Building a product to satisfy just one customer with one problem means building a castle in the air. Building a product that solves the same problem for many customers is the foundation for building a business.
Conclusion
Good things take time. In many cases, it pays off to think before you act, but this process will be surprisingly slow.
However, if you’re able to endure the tension between speed of execution and thinking time, this will be your ticket to finding out if there is a real demand for your solution, or if you’re just following a fad.
About Me
I’m a tech entrepreneur, active reserve officer, and father of three — writing about entrepreneurship, leadership, and crisis management from hard-won experience. No AI, no fluff, no promos. Just plain-text insights for people building and leading under pressure.
When I’m not solving problems, I find clarity in the mountains around Zermatt.
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